Communication Apparatus and Method Using Forward Error Correcting Statistics for Adaptive Modulation Feedback

1. A wireless transmit receive unit (WTRU) configured to provide adaptive modulation feed back for received communication signals comprising: a demodulator configured to process received modulated communication signals for a particular communication channel and to produce demodulated signals; an iterative-based forward error correction (FEC) decoder configured to decode demodulated signals by performing a variable number of decoding iterations until a target bit error rate (BER) is achieved and output decoded information bits and FEC statistic information including the number of decoding iterations; and a processor configured to generate a quality indicator based on the FEC statistic information including the number of decoding iterations for transmission as adaptive modulation feedback with respect to received modulated signals whereby a WTRU from which modulated communications signals are received is enabled to adjust transmission modulation based upon reception of the adaptive modulation feedback generated by said processor.

2. The WTRU of claim 1 wherein the FEC decoder is configured to output additional FEC statistic information from among the group of statistics including a number of corrected symbols, a number of un-correctable symbols, and Viterbi trace weights.

3. The WTRU of claim 2 wherein the processor is configured to generate an estimate of bit error rate (BER) as the quality indicator.

4. The WTRU of claim 3 configured for use in a Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) as a user equipment (UE) or a base station including a receiver configured to receive modulated signals and a transmitter configured to transmit modulated signals including signals adaptive modulation feedback generated by said processor.

5. The WTRU of claim 4 wherein the demodulator, the FEC decoder and the processor are implemented on an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC).

6. The WTRU of claim 1 configured for use in a Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) as a user equipment (UE) or a base station including a receiver configured to receive modulated signals and a transmitter configured to transmit modulated signals including signals adaptive modulation feedback generated by said processor.

7. The WTRU of claim 1 wherein the demodulator, the FEC decoder and the processor are implemented on an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC).

8. A method for implementing adaptive modulation feed back for received communication signals comprising: processing received modulated communication signals for a particular communication channel and to produce demodulated signals; decoding demodulated signals using an iterative-based forward error correction (FEC) process by performing a variable number of decoding iterations until a target bit error rate (BER) is achieved to produce decoded information bits and FEC statistic information including the number of decoder iterations; and generating a quality indicator based on the FEC statistic information including the number of decoder iterations for transmission as adaptive modulation feedback with respect to received modulated signals whereby a WTRU from which modulated communications signals are received is enabled to adjust transmission modulation based upon reception of the adaptive modulation feedback.

9. The method of claim 8 wherein the decoding produces additional FEC statistic information from among the group of statistics including a number of corrected symbols, a number of un-correctable symbols and Viterbi trace weights.

10. The method of claim 9 wherein an estimate of bit error rate (BER) is generated as the quality indicator.

11. The method of claim 10 performed by a WTRU configured for use in a Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) as a user equipment (UE) or a base station that has a receiver configured to receive modulated signals and a transmitter configured to transmit modulated signals including the generated adaptive modulation feedback.

12. The method of claim 11 wherein the WTRU has a demodulator, a FEC decoder and a processor implemented on an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) and the processing received modulated communication signals, decoding demodulated signals and generating a quality indicator are performed by the ASIC.